Unfreedom in Wisconsin

I always feel a certain dread when I have to return to Wisconsin after a break in Canada.  It’s not about the teaching (usually), but rather my sense that some further horrible decision will be made by the state government that will make life there even more unnecessarily unpleasant than it already is.

A New York Times piece from a week ago, “The Destruction of Progressive Wisconsin” by Dan Kaufman, does a good job in summarizing the transformation of Wisconsin over the past five years under Governor Scott Walker and his henchmen within the Republican-controlled state legislature; the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also is discussed.  (ALEC is one of my bêtes noires.)

Individual freedom is a central concern of mine, both politically and in my philosophical work.  So I find it fascinating, and at the same time deeply depressing, to see the ways in which pro-plutocracy organizations like ALEC, and the politicians that implement ALEC’s ‘model legislation,’ deploy the rhetoric of ‘freedom’ to justify their policies.  So-called ‘right-to-work’ laws are a perfect example of this: such laws, of course, do not ensure anything like a ‘right to work.’  Moreover, they do not remove a restriction on employment.  People always are free to accept or decline a job at a unionized firm.  Nobody is every ‘forced’ to join a union.  What ‘right-to-work’ laws do is restrict freedom of contract, encourage freeriding, and coercively (through the force of law) undermine the viability unions.  It’s an Orwellian term.

Having smashed the unions of Wisconsin – and thereby undermined the freedom of workers there – Walker and his minions have turned their sights on the state’s civil service.  Kaufman explains:

By adding the Civil Service bill [to previous ‘right-to-work’ legislation], Mr. Walker brings Wisconsin closer to the achievement of a long-sought goal of the libertarian right: universal “at-will employment.” Unlike union workers or state employees, whose collective bargaining agreements or Civil Service rules generally require employers to demonstrate “just cause” for them to be fired, at-will employees can be terminated at any time for any reason. At-will employment is promoted by the Heritage Foundation and American Legislative Exchange Council, which disseminates model bills to state legislators benefiting its corporate members and conservative private backers.

The ‘libertarian right,’ of course, interprets a law that permits ‘at-will employment’ as one that is ‘freedom enhancing’ in nature.  And at-will employment does increase freedom – but only the freedom of those individuals who already enjoy considerable wealth and power, namely, employers.  It increases their freedom to dominate others, by entitling employers to fire arbitrarily – and thus to threaten more generally – their employees.  The flipside of this kind of freedom for the powerful, of course, is unfreedom or subjugation for employees.   Employees are rendered even more vulnerable to the will of their employers under an ‘at-will employment’ regime. 

The less that employees are subject to arbitrary firing – and subject to ongoing threats of arbitrary firing – the more they enjoy what some political philosophers who write on liberty call ‘freedom as non-domination’ or ‘republican liberty.’  (The reference to ‘republican liberty’ by political philosophers such as Philip Pettit, it should be stressed, refers to the Roman Republic, where a freeman enjoyed a certain status under the law, and obviously is not a reference to the contemporary American Republican Party, which generally opposes republican freedom for most citizens.)  In contrast, the more that employees are subject to arbitrary firing – and thus subject to ongoing threats of arbitrary firing – the more they are subject to domination, and thus the more they are unfree.  

So while the libertarian right, and the contemporary Republican Party more generally, portrays itself as championing individual freedom through such policies, it in fact is championing only the freedom of the already powerful, whilst further restricting and undermining the freedom of most citizens. 

Professors such as myself hardly have been exempt from the Republicans’ assault on liberty within Wisconsin.  After all, the recent attack on tenure is precisely about undermining academic freedom and rendering academics more vulnerable to the will of the politically powerful. 

Sadly, the dark days in Wisconsin do not look to be ending any time soon… 

Plutocrats pull the plug on perennial political puppet Walker

As I have noted earlier here, the current political system within the United States, to a great extent at least, is a de facto plutocracy.  And one would be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of this than Scott Walker.  Almost all of his important political decisions since becoming governor of Wisconsin in January 2011 have furthered the interests the plutocratic class, and harmed the interests of everyone else, especially the poor, women, and workers.  Much of Walker’s harsh right-wing legislation is pulled directly from ALEC. 

(If you would like to witness some vivid examples of Walker’s craven appeasement of the wealthy, there is this video of his interaction with Wisconsin billionaire Diana Hendricks, as well as the prank phone call in which Walker mistakenly believed that he is speaking with David Koch.)

And now Scott Walker has dropped out of the race to become the Republican nominee for president. 

While I always thought that is was unlikely that he would become the GOP nominee, let alone win the presidency, it never struck me as impossible.  Even a 1-in-50 chance of Walker becoming most powerful person on earth terrified me.  In recent weeks, fortunately, his odds of winning the nomination declined precipitously, driving him to increasingly desperate measures, such as promising to ‘wreak havoc’ on Washington, and doubling-down on his ongoing anti-union crusade.  But, thankfully and unsurprisingly, these manic and malevolent gestures were to no avail.

Amusingly, in his exit speech, Walker said: “Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race.”  Simply put, he is ‘leading’ by quitting.  Well okay then!  I very much hope that he exercises such leadership again soon as governor of Wisconsin.

As the plutocratic candidate par excellence, it seems clear that Walker decided to abandon his quest for the presidency once his wealthy funders told him that the gig was up.  Following two lacklustre debate performances, some bizarre policy statements (e.g., considering a border wall with Canada to be a ‘legitimate issue’), and numerous flip-flops (e.g., his various positions concerning birthright citizenship), Walker’s stock was in free-fall.  Throwing more money at the Walker team would not help at this point.  Money may be far too powerful in contemporary politics, but it couldn’t help Walker’s intrinsic shortcomings as a national candidate, such as his aggressive lack of charisma and his dim-witted demeanour.  So, as Josh Marshall points out at TPM, Walker “lived by the Koch,” and now has “died by the Koch.” 

Gee.  It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving puppet.  

ALEC Rock

The political system of the contemporary United States is a de facto oligarchy (a ‘plutocracy,’ to be precise).  And the organization that shapes much of its legislation these days, especially at the state-level, is ALEC (the ‘American Legislative Exchange Council’).  The ‘model bills’ that ALEC drafts – and which subsequently often are passed with only minor tweaks by Republican-controlled state legislatures – aim at serving the interests and increasing the power of the wealthy (by weakening or destroying environmental protections, regulations on corporations, taxes on the wealthy, regulations on campaign contributions, and so forth), and at disempowering the less advantaged (by weakening or destroying collective bargaining rights, voting rights, local self-government, public education, workplace protections, and so forth).

This excellent cartoon – a spoof of the old ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ cartoon “I’m Just a Bill” – nicely summarizes what ALEC is about and its thoroughly negative impact on contemporary American politics.